Malaysia's Bersih & the Facade of "Clean Elections"

A foreign-funded movement for a foreign-serving agenda.by Tony Cartalucci

Bangkok, Thailand July 16, 2011 - No one would honestly suggest that cleaning up politics and holding any given government accountable for their actions is not an honorable, noble cause. It is honorable indeed, however, when such a movement takes to the streets but is funded by a foreign government and led by a servants of foreign interests it becomes obvious it has been hijacked in order to exploit the aspirations of a frustrated public for a self-serving agenda. Such a movement will ultimately fail to achieve the goals it proclaims to support and will give rise to corruption and tyranny the likes of which its followers could not imagine.

A recent example of this phenomenon is unfolding in the streets and within the political scene of Malaysia where a movement calling themselves "Bersih," or the "Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections" has captured the minds and imaginations of Malaysia's youth and progressive enclaves, both in Malaysia and around the world. While Bersih's leader Ambiga Sreenevasan claims ad nauseum "we are fighting for free and fair elections," what she fails to share quite as often with her impressionable, well-intentioned followers is the fact that her movement is also funded and has received training from the United States government and a host of foreign corporate-funded foundations.

The Malaysian Insider reported on June 27, 2011 that Bersih leader Ambiga Sreenevassan "admitted to Bersih receiving some money from two US organisations — the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Open Society Institute (OSI) — for other projects, which she stressed were unrelated to the July 9 march." A visit to the NDI website revealed indeed that funding and training had been provided by the US organization - before NDI took down the information and replaced it with a more benign version purged entirely of any mention of Bersih. For funding Ambiga claims is innocuous, the NDI's rushed obfuscation of any ties to her organization suggests something more sinister at play.

Photo: NDI's website before taking down any mention to Malaysia's Bersih movement. (click image to enlarge)

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Casting further doubt on Bersih's real agenda is the involvement of Malaysia's opposition front Pakatan Rakyat whose coalition members promised to bring in hundreds of thousands of supporters to take part in the July 9th, 2011 Bersih 2.0 rally. The opposition front is led by Anwar Ibrahim and a coalition of opposition parties with a long history of affiliation with Anwar. That Anwar Ibrahim himself was Chairman of the Development Committee of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1998, held lecturing positions at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, was a consultant to the World Bank, and a panelist at the Neo-Con lined National Endowment for Democracy's "Democracy Award" and a panelist at a NED donation ceremony - the very same US organization funding and supporting Bersih - casts irrefutable doubt on their official agenda for "clean and fair elections."

Photo: Taken from the US National Endowment for Democracy's 2007 Democracy Award event held in Washington D.C., Anwar Ibrahim can be seen to the far left and participated as a "panelist." It is no surprise that NED is now subsidizing his bid to worm his way back into power in Malaysia. (click image to enlarge)

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In reality, Bersih's leadership along with Anwar and their host of foreign sponsors are attempting to galvanize the very real grievances of the Malaysian people and exploit them to propel themselves into power. While many may be tempted to suggest that "clean and fair elections" truly are Bersih and Anwar's goal, and that US funding via NED's NDI and billionaire bankster George Soros' Open Society are entirely innocuous, a thorough examination of these organizations, how they operate, and their admitted agenda reveals the proverbial cliff Bersih is leading its followers and the nation of Malaysia over.

NED, NDI, IRI, & Freedom House are run by warmongering imperialists We begin our thorough examination of these organizations with a look at the board of directors of NED, which funds NDI and who, judging by their supposed mission to support "freedom around the world," should be filled with Nobel Peace Prize laureates, accomplished diplomats, and definitive examples of democracy in action. Instead, we have John Bohn who traded petrochemicals, was an international banker for 13 years with Wells Fargo, and is currently serving as a principal for a global advisory and consulting firm, GlobalNet Partners, which assists foreign businesses by making their "entry into the complex China market easy." Surely Bohn's ability to manipulate China's political landscape through NED's various activities both inside of China and along its peripheries constitutes an alarming conflict of interests. However, it appears "conflict of interests" is a reoccurring theme throughout both NED and Freedom House.

Video: Noam Chomsky in 1993 on the NED's projects in Nicaragua: "It's about what you would expect from a bipartisan democracy campaign - it's an attempt to impose what is called democracy, meaning rule by the rich and the powerful, without interference by the mob but within the framework of formal electoral procedures."

We then consider several of the certified warmongers serving upon NED's board of directors including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate, utterly insane Project for a New American Century. Within the pages of documents produced by this "think tank" are pleas to various US presidents to pursue war against sovereign nations, the increase of troops in nations already occupied by US forces, and what equates to a call for American global hegemony in a Hitlerian 90 page document titled "Rebuilding Americas Defenses." As we will see, this warmongering think tank serves as a nexus around which fellow disingenuous "rights advocate" Freedom House also gravitates.

The "Statement of Principles," signed off by NED chairmen Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Vin Weber, states, "we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles." Of course by "international order" they mean meddling beyond the sovereign borders of the United States and is merely used as a euphemism for global imperialism. Other Neo-Con degenerates that signed their name to this statement include Freedom House's Paula Dobriansky, Dan Quayle (formally), and Donald Rumsfeld (formally), along with Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, and Elliot Abrams.

A PNAC "Statment on Post-War Iraq" regarding a wholehearted endorsement of nation-building features the signatures of NED chairman Will Marshall, Freedom House's Frank Carlucci (2002), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Martin Indyk (Lowy Institute board member, co-author of the conspiring "Which Path to Persia?" report), and William Kristol and Robert Kagan both of the warmongering Foreign Policy Initiative. It should be noted that the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is, for all intents and purposes, PNAC's latest incarnation and just recently featured an open letter to House Republicans calling on them to disregard the will of the American people and continue pursuing the war in Libya. The FPI letter even suggests that the UN resolution authorizing the war in the first place, was holding America "hostage" and that it should be exceeded in order to do more to "help the Libyan opposition."

It is safe to say that the National Endowment for Democracy is not interested in any shape, form, or way in "supporting freedom around the world," nor Malaysia's "clean and fair elections," but rather leveraging these ideals to establish an insidious, self-serving, global corporate oligarchy. Within the confines of PNAC, and its successors, the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, these supposed "democracy and human rights advocates" have engineered and promoted the continuation of the most obscene and horrendous chapters of mass murder, invasion, occupation, and unrelenting war in recent human history.

In turn, NED, an organization that Malaysia's Anwar Ibrahim is an active participant in, funds a myriad of propagandists and sub-funding arms, most notably Freedom House, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute which is on record funding Malaysia's Bersih movement. Disingenuous, warmonger-infested advocacy groups like Freedom House have been relentlessly campaigning in support of Bersih. A selection of their "reports" can be read below, and seen cited by the international corporate media to bolster Bersih's non-existent legitimacy.

A selection of Freedom House's rhetorical support for Malaysia's Berish:

The Council on Foreign Relations, a US based think tank that represents the collective interests and agenda of the Fortune 500 corporations that constitute its membership has also weighed in on Malaysia's Bersih movement, decidedly behind the foreign-funded organization and applauding the division it is creating within Malaysian society. It should be noted that the CFR praises the "fine" coverage of Bersih by Australian National University's New Mandala blog run by imposter-academic Andrew Walker. Walker in turn, has been recently caught denying his involvement with the Lowy Institute, yet another collection of fraud academics, fake journalists, and policy wonks all in the employ of the Fortune 500.

George Soros & Open Society Institute (OSI)

George Soros' Open Society Institute not only was cited by Bersih leader Ambiga Sreenevasan as having funded her opposition street-front, but is also funding a myriad of corporate agenda-serving "democracy and human rights advocacy" groups providing rhetorical support and contrived metrics cited by the corporate media to further lend Bersih legitimacy. Open Society funds NDI partner organization "Transparency International" which also receives funding from Exxon, General Electric, Shell, Pfizer, British Petroleum, HSBC Holdings, and Procter & Gamble. Soros' Open Society also funds Amnesty International (page 10) and Human Rights Watch which have both rushed to Bersih's defense before, during, and after their July 9th street rally.

Soros-funded Human Rights Watch's support for the Malaysian Bersih movement:

It should be noted that the "joint letter" was signed off by fellow Soros and Fortune 500-funded Amnesty International, as well as NED, Soros, and Tides Foundation-funded International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

Soros-funded Amnesty International's support for the Malaysian Bersih movement:

If there was any doubt in one's mind regarding the nature of the National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros' Open Society, and the myriad of contrived self-appointed international arbiters serving the globalists' agenda, who they support, and why, reading the signed confession put out by the Project for a New American Century, calling for American global hegemony should lay it to rest. Just as the British Empire and the Romans before them leveraged the concept of spreading "civilized society" to sell their aspirations of global conquest to an ignorant population, the modern Anglo-American corporate-financier oligarchy is leveraging the concepts of spreading "human rights," "democracy," and "freedom" to sell their emerging "international order." This is an order described by Neo-Con degenerate Robert Kagan as serving "the needs of the United States and its allies, which constructed it," and clearly not the liberal democratic utopia many progressive activists believe they are contributing to.

Image: The modern day imperial networks building the Anglo-American corporate-financier "international order." (click on image to enlarge)

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Consider the insidious methods used by the Romans to pacify and conquer entire populations by "integrating" them into their own Roman "international order."

'His object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He therefore gave official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses. He educated the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a preference for British ability as compared to the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as 'civilization', when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement.'

Indeed the alleged "free and fair elections," proposed to Malaysia by the likes of NED and Freedom House to be carried out by foreign-funded Bersih, are nothing more than features of Malaysia's own enslavement. For a look into Malaysia's future, one should consider Egypt's recent turmoil - turmoil many Bersih supporters eagerly hold up as an inspiration for their current movement.

Malaysia faces similar crossroads and must decide for themselves if they will clean up their government themselves through pragmatism, truly independent grassroots activism, and technical solutions to solve the problems they face as a sovereign nation, or if they will follow a feckless, self-defeating political agenda manipulated and led by foreign interests, dividing and destabilizing their nation so that foreign powers can sweep into power their stooges and once again direct Malaysia's destiny for them, to the benefit of no Malaysian.